Re: [Scalzi] Is Science Fiction this generation's Western?

Speaking of Cowboys & Aliens:  I was exited watching the trailer until seeing 
Harrison Ford, (or should I say the facial expression that Harrison has passed 
off as acting for at least the last decade), show up and my heart sank.

Is he still that big a box office draw that merited putting him in the movie.  
Daniel Craig looks like great casting but Ford gets a big "meh" from me, and 
probably turns a see in the theater to wait for dvd/netflix movie.

Mike F.  




________________________________
From: Johne Cook <[email protected]>
To: DADL (off topic) <[email protected]>
Sent: Wed, December 1, 2010 10:06:05 AM
Subject: [DADL-OT] [Scalzi] Is Science Fiction this generation's Western?

http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2010/12/is-science-fiction-this-eras-western/


John Scalzi
John Scalzi is an award-winning science fiction writer.
full bio of John Scalzi

Hey, folks. The e-mail I'm going to answer this week features an epiphany. How 
often does that happen? Here's the e-mail:


I was watching the trailer for next year's Cowboys & Aliens movie when I had an 
epiphany: Science fiction and Westerns are really a lot alike, separated by 
several decades. Both are mainly action-oriented, both are meant to appeal to 
young men. The difference is now westerns are dead. Do you think science fiction 
will also go the way of westerns, and what will replace it if it does?
>
With all due apologies to my correspondent, I don't know that the idea that 
science fiction is the new Western is all that groundbreaking -- if nothing 
else, the first Toy Story made it explicit that the frontier of space was 
replacing the Wild West as the locus of the imagination when it had Buzz 
Lightyear eclipse Woody as the cool toy. And while Westerns aren't 100 percent 
dead -- a couple a year still pop out -- they've gone to a kind of meta, kind of 
arty, kind of self-referential place and have been there at least since 
Unforgiven, in 1992. When the big Western film of the year is a remake of True 
Grit by the Coen brothers, and the most financially successful Western of the 
last decade is the one about two gay cowboys, it's pretty clear this isn't your 
grandfather's Western genre anymore.
Meanwhile science fiction and its overlapping brethren genres of fantasy and 
comic-book films have become the places where Hollywood goes to draw young men 
to the theaters (although not just young men). Science fiction has had a good 
run of it -- it's been a consistent draw for that demographic for more than 
three decades -- and it doesn't look like it's going to run out of steam anytime 
soon.

But could it go the way of the Western? Sure. Tastes change, and even during 
science fiction's reign since Star Wars came out, in 1977, there have been times 
when it took a backseat to other genres, from fantasy to cop films to comedies. 
That said, there are a few things science fiction has going for it that Westerns 
don't, which can help contribute to its longevity.

1. It's infinite. The general era in which the classic Westerns took place is 
between 1850 and 1900, with the 1880s (the era of the gunfight at the O.K. 
Corral) being ground zero for Western mythology, and it's all -- by definition 
-- taking place in the U.S. West. Science fiction, on the other hand, can take 
place today or in a time close enough to it not to matter (see Iron Man, 
Inception, District 9, Transformers), in the far future (Avatar, Star Trek, 
Wall-E), or even the past (the aforementioned Cowboys & Aliens, Back to the 
Future Part III, and even, technically speaking, all of the Star Wars films). 
Nor is it tied to any one location; it can and does happen anywhere in the 
universe it wants to. This gives filmmakers quite a lot of ways to at least 
superficially keep their films novel.

2. It doesn't have to deal with uncomfortable facts about our nation's history. 
Hey, remember how the Native Americans were always the bad guys in those 
Westerns? Yeah, that's kind of awkward now. Not to mention all the other racial 
stereotyping in the Western genre or the really sort of horrible things about 
the actual U.S. West back in the day. If you're a filmmaker, you can spend your 
time tiptoeing around those various land mines, or you can put everything in the 
future, where the bad guys can be aliens, or robots, or alien robots -- not 
humans of any sort at all (unless they're zombies). Which really takes the 
pressure off. This is not to say filmmakers today can't and don't make fools of 
themselves -- hello, Jar Jar! -- but it does mean that science fiction as a 
genre doesn't have to deal with the real-world baggage that Westerns do.

3. It's supported in the culture. Science fiction isn't just popular at the 
movies. It's a huge segment of the video-game industry, as anyone who has lost 
hundreds of hours this year playing StarCraft II or Halo: Reach will tell you. 
It's perennially popular on television, with its own cable network as well as 
shows on major networks. Rumor has it that people even write books and comic 
books in the genre. Westerns? Not so much at the moment: they're hanging on in 
books, but Western-themed video games and television shows are few and far 
between. This matters because every medium feeds others. Now, science fiction 
can decline in these other mediums as well -- Western-themed writing and 
television once thrived -- but its health in these other fields is a positive 
sign for its films.

So, no, I don't expect science fiction to go the way of Westerns anytime soon. 
On the other hand, if Cowboys & Aliens is the hit its filmmakers hope it is, it 
might breathe a little more life into the Western genre. Wouldn't that be 
interesting?

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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